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Friday, May 31, 2013

After Earth

Review by Matt Finley

M. Night Shyamalan has a new movie out,
co-written with Gary Whitta (THE BOOK OF ELI), called AFTER EARTH.

In it, humans have ruined the planet,
skedaddled to an off-world colony, gotten predatored by aliens who can smell
human fear, and fought back by training select individuals – an elite force
called the Rangers – to psychologically suppress their fear response (a process
called “ghosting”). Real-life celebrity father and son Will and Jaden Smith
(the former of whom has a story credit) play famous Ranger, Cypher Raige, and
his determined wanna-be Ranger son, Kitai.

When they crash land on the abandoned
Earth, which has become a lush, neo-prehistoric forbidden zone of ferocious
animals and ruthless climatological fluctuations, a crippled Cypher sends Kitai
on a five-day trek through the wilderness to retrieve the ship’s lost beacon –
their only means of summoning Cypher’s Ranger buddies.

Even for a typical coming-of-age/hero’s
journey type adventure romp, AFTER EARTH is incredibly streamlined and digestible…
often to the point snooze-induction. Lodged uncomfortably between a fantastical
adventure tale for kids and a tepid action flick for adults, Shyamalan’s film had
all the potential for the simple, smart sci-fi of a savvy YA adaptation – THE
HUNGER GAMES for example – if only there were more than two characters, one of
whom is immobilized and sporadically unconscious.

Granted, even with a couple jacked-up
legs, Cypher is able to keep in constant, glowering contact with his son
through a fancy camera screen thing on the wrist of Kitai’s Jr. Ranger suit.
It’s one of innumerable frustrating gadgets the film introduces,
all of which add up to a staggeringly advanced future society where technology
has developed just far enough to be completely unhelpful to the film’s
protagonists.

Portable 3-D body scanners can render HD
projections of Cipher’s mangled gams, but can do nothing to treat him; Cypher
can view and scan miles of the planet’s surface in real-time via swarms of
flying drones, but not one can pop over and nab the lost beacon; Kitai’s super suit can
magically sense enemy proximity, but can’t keep him warm in the snow.

Any one of these complaints alone could
be written off as spastic nerd rage or taken as a begrudging exchange for
whatever inevitable drama or action was attained as a result of the
technological shortcoming… together, they add up to a pile of unapologetic
MacGuffins and expositional devices clumsily hidden behind superficial genre
trappings in order to lazily propel a half-cocked emotional arc about family
and fear.

Anyone hoping for the sass-spouting,
alien-busting Will Smith of summers passed will be disappointed to find the
actor formerly known as Fresh Prince playing a dour, severe military lifer. Also:
Jaden Smith his weird. He talks in some kind of bizarre half accent, and
whenever he gets intense (which is, like, all the time), his exhaustive brow
crease makes him look like a creepy li’l Klingon. Just sayin’.

The best thing I can say about AFTER
EARTH is that it looks real nice. The production design on the ships,
spacesuits and futuristic architecture is as minimal and sleek as the narrative
is simplistic, managing to be unobtrusive while avoiding avert cliché.

Shyamalan has always had a great
sense for color, from the melancholy blue wash over UNBREAKABLE to the
high-contrast yellows and reds of THE VILLAGE. AFTER EARTH is no exception. If
you can deal with a nagging environmental subtext and some laughably cartoonish
CG animals, there are some wonderfully composed shots and impressively realized
locations, spanning the harsh deserts of
the off-world colonies to the muted machinery of interstellar ships and,
ultimately, the lush greens and blues humanity’s one-time home.

There was a time not long ago when a
summer release by M. Night would have been heralded as “from the visionary
director of THE SIXTH SENSE.” Maybe a voice would say “you’ll never
guess how it ends!” Definitely his name would’ve appeared in the title. But AFTER
EARTH, a lightweight sci-fi trifle that barely justifies a theatrical release,
is also after THE LAST AIRBENDER (not to mention after THE HAPPENING), so the
PR machine has conveniently omitted the director and co-writer’s name from promotions.

In a way, it’s a shame. This is certainly
Shyamalan’s best film since his gorgeously shot, unforgivably daft THE VILLAGE.

When I say barely worthy of
theatrical release, I don’t mean to dismiss it entirely: AFTER EARTH would feel
right at home as a top-shelf made-for-cable offering on SyFy, or even as the
keystone of ABC Family’s Father’s Day lineup, but the story is so compact, the
stakes so low, and the world-building so lackadaisical that the film never
achieves a dramatic scale befitting of an auditorium screen’s dimensions. (2
out of 4 stars)